One response to “Klavan Klobbers the POS”

I love Andrew Klavan; but, in this case, I disagree with his terminology. I believe Obama’s term is “Pinstripe Patronage.” Rewarding big money donors if they ante up big bucks during the campaign, they get the contracts and loan guarantees when their guy’s in office. Think Solyndra and a dozen other flopped “Green Energy” deals.

E. J. Dionne, Jr., of the Washington Post, wrote about this transition in a 1999 column after Daley was reëlected. Dionne wrote about a young Barack Obama, who artfully explained how the new pinstripe patronage worked: a politician rewards the law firms, developers, and brokerage houses with contracts, and in return they pay for the new ad campaigns necessary for reëlection. “They do well, and you get a $5 million to $10 million war chest,” Obama told Dionne. It was a classic Obamaism: superficially critical of some unseemly aspect of the political process without necessarily forswearing the practice itself. Obama was learning that one of the greatest skills a politician can possess is candor about the dirty work it takes to get and stay elected.

At the time, Obama was growing closer to Tony Rezko, who eventually turned pinstripe patronage into an extremely lucrative way of life. Rezko’s rise in Illinois was intertwined with Obama’s.